JewelScent used data to test a new customer-centric email marketing strategy

Industry

Ecommerce

Location

Los Angeles, California

Connectors

Email data, Shopify

Results

4x

quarter over quarter revenue from email

JewelScent embeds delight into every one of its products — literally. The California company sells candles and soaps, each one with a ring hidden inside. Founded in July of 2013, JewelScent had the ambitious goal of hitting $2 million in revenue by the end of Q1 of 2014.

JewelScent’s Director of Data, Andrew Gambino, comes from the same background as most email marketers. He refers to himself as a reformed “gray hat” who sent his fair share of transaction-focused, promotional messages. While the approach worked, Andrew didn’t think it was the best way to build long-term customer value.

In January 2014 he started putting his plan into action.

Andrew Gambino, Director of Data

“Testing and measurement is a core part of this customer-centric marketing ecosystem, and RJMetrics gives us exactly the intelligence we need.”

Focus on the Customer Experience

Andrew designed an email marketing program that went beyond driving one-off transactions and instead focused on building a relationship with customers at each stage of their lifecycle. At the acquisition stage customers received a friendly “welcome!” email, post-purchase they received a short survey on their experience. Each message was designed to be part of an ongoing conversation.

These emails were then interspersed with traditional product promotion email: sales notification, giveaways, and new product announcements. “We didn’t use a lot of data at this point,” Andrew admits. “We just wanted to create an experience that we thought customers would enjoy.”

Measuring Results

While data wasn’t used to define the inputs for the new strategy, it was relied on heavily to measure results. Andrew used UTM tagging to track the performance of every email that went out. He then pulled this data into RJMetrics so he could see how individual campaigns were translating into revenue, optimizing as he went, and tracking the impact of email over time.

And what he saw was good. In January, revenue from email was already on the rise. By the end of Q1 2014 email revenue was 4x higher than the previous time period.

RJMetrics makes it easy to explore your data in an intuitive interface backed up by a lightning fast cache.

What’s next

With solid initial success, the plan is to roll out more segmentation. “In the near future, we’ll be using RJMetrics to build targeted lists based on things like average order value or past items purchased,” Andrew says.

In addition, Andrew and the rest of the JewelScent team, have ambitions that extend well beyond email. “Our goal is to create the best possible experience across every interaction, from ads to email to landing pages. Testing and measurement is a core part of this customer-centric marketing ecosystem, and RJMetrics gives us exactly the intelligence we need.”